…Not In The Wider Interests Of Football Writing…

AFC Wimbledon v Luton Town – A Match Preview

The eve of the season is upon us… as you all know as I’ve spent pretty much all week telling you about it, which at very least inspired my wife to praise me (Well what she actually said was ‘I’m not saying your a bad writer, I’m saying your a bad husband…’ Bah, she’s just jealous because she doesn’t get to come to Eastbourne on Tuesday…).

We have had the privilage of watching those patronising local news reports (‘Most people haven’t even heardof the Blue Square Premier…’), and of course the written media are doing us proud once more. Having said that, the standout preview was by English football’s premier independent blog 200percent (http://www.twohundredpercent.net/?p=1714).

Because if I listed all the other links right here I’d never see you again, I have reproduced them at the bottom of this article. Suffice to say the reality of our task tomorrow is sinking in. Couldn’t we have just played Tamworth at home? We would still have got the same amount of press, just we wouldn’t have had to share it this time round.

As some of you may have already noticed, this years Match Previews aren’t in sections, so you aren’t going to get stuff like ‘I went on to the Luton message board and they seem really excited about the game’… Really? Duh! Instead it’ll just be me, rambling on about the match, hopefully with enough interesting material to avoid you skipping down to find the match odds.

Talking of the match odds (seamless as ever…), I noticed there has been a link from the sponsors on The Guestbook for the whole summer. I have received no such offer (and to be honest I would have taken an extra tenner added to my account…). This after all the free (and exclusive) advertising I gave them last year, despite their best efforts to rinse every penny they could from Dons fans with odds that didn’t quite represent value (for all you newcomers, italics refer to sarcasm. Or irony. Or possibly neither.)

Anyway, match odds. This week we go with William Hill, who like most bookies on opening day haven’t a clue which way its going to go. Luton are slight favourites at 7/5, Dons are 8/5, with the draw at 21/10. Bit disappointing from a Dons perspective, all the bookies seem to be playing it safe, after the appalling prices we got last year when AFCW were the market.

If your looking for best prices, for Luton, at the moment Boylesports and ‘another company’ are offering 3/2 whereas Bet365 seem to be backing the Hatters on this one with best prices of 19/10 for a Dons win and 12/5 on the draw will ensure they see some of my money this weekend (albeit hopefully temporarily…).

Other news. There still appeared to be some tickets selling tonight, the returns from Tempest and Strank Stand season ticket holders. Which means while the game would have sold out easily on the open market, the restrictions the club introduced to make sure no dastardly Luton fans got in our areas of the ground have put up enough obstacles for a few people to say ‘Woah… I want to go to the game, but I don’t want to have to produce photo i.d. and a utilities bill and actually turn up at Kingsmeadow during the day…’. Which means in true Dons style, everyone who really wanted a ticket has got one.

So… team news. First up Luton. I don’t really want to talk about them, because they are absolutely full of quality to the point it’s frightening. Almost as some kind of pisstake, they signed Steve Basham this week. The only thing I want to say about this is Basham was quite complementary about the way we play football on the Luton website. To add a Dons connection to the squad they signed everyones favourite fat Danny Dyer lookalike, Shane ‘Shipped Six At Grimsby’ Gore. An ex-Don with great experience of picking the ball out of the net when facing us last year, perhaps our best chance relies on something happening to first choice Mark Tyler…

As for your Dons, apparently Adjei has a knock, but as I predicted yesterday he wouldn’t have even made the bench for this one. Sebb Brow has signed and is in the squad, but will he be on the bench? See my earlier post for my own backtracking on the Sebb Brown situation. Everything else is up for grabs…

Media review now, and I open with a piece of writing ALL Dons fans should read… http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/A55429068 … well done Trebor, and ignore that one irritant, he seems to be winding up other Luton fans as much as us!

And thats it. If you can’t make it to the game remember to check out the Matchday Stadium or tune in to Radio WDON, links as usual can be found to the right.

And if you have a ticket, remember to keep it positive, give the new guys a good impression of the fans they are going to be playing in front of, and remember, if the guy next to you starts hurling abuse at some poor unfortunate player, you make sure you yell some encoragement to our player twice as loud, and I guarantee people around you will join in. We aren’t just pulling out the stops for tomorrow, we are back in a national division so sitting back and quietly watching the game is no longer an option. We are just setting the bar tomorrow, lets make sure we keep up the noise for the other 22 games as well.